Rating: 
Title: Cruel Prince
Author: Holly Black
Series: The Folk of the Air
Publisher: Little Brown Books for Young Reader
Publication Date: January 2, 2018
Format: Kindle/Audiobook
# of Pages: 384
Synopsis:
Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.
To win a place at the Court, she must defy him–and face the consequences.
In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. But as civil war threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.
I’m having some deja vu with this book; I stayed up into the wee hours of the night to finish it, and while I enjoyed the book (and do plan on reading Wicked King) I’m not falling over myself to get it in my hands. If I had to choose one word to describe how I’m feeling, it’s underwhelmed.
So underwhelmed in fact, that I don’t even know if I should be writing this review. I finished this book at the beginning of the month and wanted to write one, but as I sit here at 12:01 AM on a Sunday night Monday morning, I. Have. Nothing. Soooo it looks like this is going to be a brief review. (I always say that and then end up writing a novel, so we’ll see what actually happens.)
I think my problem is that one of my favorite books is A Court of Mist and Fury; it checked all of the boxes with everything I wanted and some I didn’t even know I wanted. Mind you, I went into this book with very few expectations because I wanted to read and enjoy this book for what it is. In ACOMAF (and the rest of the trilogy) you get Fae that are truly cruel without being bullies. In The Cruel Prince, you don’t. Cardan is cruel, yes, but he’s also just bullying a mortal girl. Bravo, way to pick a weak target. He’s also not in the book as much as I expected him to be, considering that he’s the title character.
Instead, we follow Jude. Jude’s character I can take or leave. She’s not my favorite, but I certainly don’t dislike her as much as her twin sister, Taryn (she’s a bitch). I feel no connection with neither her nor Cardan (though by the end, maaaaybe his character more than hers), and I feel like by her wanting to prove that she’s better than them, it actually makes her just like them. (Which she also wants???) It’s all sort of confusing. I wish we got to see more of her involvement being a spy, but that plotline was quickly shot to smithereens.
I started to get chatty and now I’m running out of things to say, hahaha. So basically, the twists that occurred toward the end weren’t all that surprising; with one, I had a suspicion from the beginning (but also WHY WAS IT NECESSARY???), and with the other, it surprised me at first until I thought about the sequel that came out. As for the romance, no. That ship has not set sail because it came out of the clear blue and it’s so underdeveloped it’s actually cringe-worthy.
Would I recommend this book? Yes. but don’t expect anything ground-breaking. It’s good, the world development is pretty decent (but needs more), and the ending left room for some interesting things to develop in the rest of the series. I’m definitely interested to see where it goes.
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